The late rap icon, Tupac Shakur, would have turned 40 on Thursday June 16.

Baltimore-based Author/producer John Potash will make his first presentation in Los Angeles that night to present part of his film, The FBI War on Tupac Shakur and Black Leaders. The film presents the conclusion of interviews of Tupac’s closest mentors. They confirmed that Tupac only pretended to be a “gangsta” in order to appeal to gangs and politicize them. This was part of his Black Panther extended family’s work gaining peace truces between the Bloods and Crips gangs, while politicizing them nationwide.

Potash’s book, with over 1,000 endnotes citing sources that include court and CIA documents, is subtitled: U.S. Intelligence’s Murderous Targeting of Tupac, MLK, Malcolm, Panthers, Hendrix, Marley, Rappers and Linked Ethnic Leftists. The book and film present little-known activist aspects of other musicians’ lives and evidence of U.S. Intelligence’s hands in their deaths.